If someone in your office spends the week calling site engineers for updates and retyping them, this is for you. It is not for a team where nobody owns the programme once the planner sends it. Hire that person first.
What does your coordinator do on Thursday?
Ask it about one day. On Thursday, what does the coordinator actually do?
The rule is ours, drawn from how we set up Projects for fit-out and MEP firms. A tracker removes the calling. It cannot decide which of three stuck approvals moves the handover. That is why the test starts with the person, not the software.
What does the second coordinator really cost?
More than a salary. It costs a second layer of people between the site and the dates.
A Dubai fit-out commenter put it plainly on a LinkedIn thread in June 2026. Site engineers, supervisors and even project managers "are only active on WhatsApp." Her firm keeps "a coordinator to make weekly reports and another coordinator to call and check their schedules." That is one firm's description, in one comment. It is also the exact trade: two people stand where one shared place for updates could.
The same thread lists the repeat problems a fit-out PM faces: tracking multiple projects across locations, and managing snagging, handovers and closeout documents. The author of that post is building a rival product, so read the list as a buyer's description, not as a verdict on any tool.
If the second coordinator mainly calls and checks, a third will do the same. Calls scale with jobs. A tracker that engineers update themselves does not.
Can the foreman update it from a phone?
This is the question that decides whether the tool gets used. Gulf tools open on exactly this point. Taskity says its aim is that "approvals stop getting lost in WhatsApp." ARQVANT says "Engineers and foremen update progress and add photos from their phones, even in a basement with no signal." Both are vendor pages, quoted as the vendors wrote them, with no results claimed.
Ask every tool three things: can the foreman update from a phone browser, does it work with weak signal, and can an update come in over WhatsApp. Here is our own answer, so you can compare. Projects runs in the phone browser with nothing to install. It needs a signal, so it does not work offline. It does not take updates over WhatsApp: they arrive by email and in the app inbox. If your foremen only ever send a photo to the group, a tracker will not change that on its own. So set the rule before you buy: the foreman keeps the group, and the site engineer for each job posts the status in the tracker once a day. That is one person per job typing once, not a coordinator calling six people. If no engineer on a job will do that, the tracker has no entry point and you hire first.
Who pays for the people who only read?
On Projects, a member is anyone who creates or edits tasks, logs time or runs meetings. Clients, consultants and read-only logins are free. So the people you want to stop calling you, the client and the consultant, cost nothing to add.
A worked example from the live price list: a firm with 8 members on the shared plan comes to 8 × 179 = AED 1,432 by the bands, so the AED/SAR 2,499 monthly minimum applies. That is the number to put beside the cost of the next hire. This is arithmetic on our list, not a quote.
When do we tell you to hire first?
When no one decides the dates. If the planner sends a programme and nobody owns it after that, a tracker only gives the confusion a tidier home. Hire the person who owns the programme, then give that person the tracker.
Stay on the sheet when you run fewer than three live jobs and one person keeps it. We cover that case in Board, Gantt or spreadsheet?. Move when the same person spends Thursday on calls, and the sheet is wrong again before the client meeting.
What does Mindcat Projects do, and what does it cost?
It is for a fit-out or MEP contractor with several live jobs. Each job gets a board, a Gantt where linked tasks move together once setup switches scheduling to automatic, and a task list, all on the same tasks. Site engineers update their tasks from a phone browser. Clients and consultants get a free read-only login. Your copy is hosted in the UAE or Saudi Arabia.
Not today: updates on WhatsApp, offline use and a phone app to install. The Arabic screens are partly translated and read left to right. It is not connected to Dubai Municipality, Civil Defence or DEWA portals. Baseline comparison, Gantt PDF export, the team planner, portfolio and resource management are the maker's Enterprise add-ons, billed at cost and outside our member price.
Our page prices each member a month in bands: AED or SAR 179 for members 1 to 10, 69 for 11 to 30, 45 for 31 to 100 and 29 from 101. Each plan has a monthly minimum, so no one buys a single member at the per-member rate. The shared plan minimum is AED/SAR 2,499 a month and covers up to 10 members. Your own copy starts at AED/SAR 5,349 a month, covering up to 78 members. The quick start is a fixed package we set up for AED/SAR 2,500, once, on the shared plan, up to 10 members: it is the setup, separate from the monthly minimum. The minimum applies even with three members. Prices exclude 5 percent UAE VAT and 15 percent Saudi VAT.
We call the method One programme per job. You tell us how many live jobs and members you run, how you plan them today and where it should run. We reply with the setup plan and the monthly price per member. If hiring is the right first step, we say so. If the tracker is, tell us about your jobs. For the trade in full, see Projects for fit-out contractors and the Projects page.
